2008: A covert counterterror operation code-named Wildlife is to be mounted on the Rock of Gibraltar. This one is right off the books; the target code-named PUNTER. The Brits on land, the American mercenaries by sea. Kit Probyn, an upright Foreign Office veteran with a safe pair of hands and no previous experience of the dark arts, will be the minister’s eyes and ears on the ground. His ‚;red telephone.‘ Toby Bell, a rising Foreign Office star and the minister’s personal private secretary, has been kept out of the loop. Why? There are whispers of private armies, bounty, dicey intelligence, corporate wars.2011: A disgraced Special Forces soldier who took part in Wildlife delivers a message from the dead. The worlds of Toby Bell and Kit Probyn collide. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, at what point do these two good men become guilty bystanders?